E 469 

■8 JOAN WAR CRUSADE; 

B19 



Copy 1 




PLAIN FACTS FOE EAKNEST MEN. 



BY J. R BALME, 

AN AMERICAN CLERGYMAN. 

Author of " Magnet of the Gospel," " Mirror of the Gospel," " Lever of the Gospel,' 
and " American Slates and Churches, and Reviewers Reviewed." 



t; TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.' 



LONDON: 
HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 

AND TO BE HAD OF THE AUTHOR., 32 SUN STREET, LIVERPOOL. 



SERVILE INSURRECTION ADVOCATED 

BY THE BEV. HENKY WAED BEECHER. 



"The interval between the destruction and the salvation of the 
Republic is measured by two steps— one is emancipation, the other 
military success. The first is taken, the other delays. How is it 
to be achieved ? There is but one answer, — by the negro ! 

"They (the negroes) are the forlorn hope of the Republic. They 
are the last safe-keepers of the good cause. We must make alli- 
ance with them, or our final success is imperilled. 

" Congress is in a dispute over a Bill to arm and equip 150,000 
negroes to serve in the war. Let it stop the debate ! The case is 
settled ; the problem solved ; the argument is done. Let the re- 
cruiting sergeants beat their drums! The next levy of troops must 
not be made in the North, but on the plantations. Marshall them 
into lines by regiments and brigades ! The men that have picked 
cotton, must now pick flint ! Gather the great third army ! For 
two years Government has been searching in an enemy's country 
for a path for victory, — only the negro can find it ! Give him a 
gun and bayonet, and let him point the way ! The future is fair, 
— God and the negro are to save the Republic." — Extracted from 
Belfast News Letter, Feb. 15, 1863. 



THE CLIMAX OF DELUSION. 

On February 2d, 1863, a person claiming to be a Christian, and 
holding the position of a chaplain to the Senate of the United 
States, offered the following remarkable prayer before the com- 
mencement of senatorial business: — 

"O Lord our God, we entreat Thee to hear the prayer of Thy 
servants, which we come to make this day for the officers and men 
of our army and navy. Be pleased to give them endurance, and in 
all their sufferings stay them with Thy strength, and bestow on them 
the spirit of foresight and of combination to smite and scatter the 
enemy whenever and wherever he may be found. May they not be 
bafiied by the storms of heaven, and may no unpropitious conditions 
or elements of the material creation impede or postpone their pro- 
gress. We pray Thee that, if it shall be Thy will, even the very 
powers of physical nature may be suspended for a time while this fear- 
ful problem of Republican liberty and free institutions is wrought out. 
If it must be a war, which we do most earnestly and sadly deplore 
in itself, we pray Thee that it may be speedy and effectual war. 
And, O Lord, we pray if Thou wilt hear our petition, that the fool- 
ish gibberish of those ivho profess the illusion of an unholy peace may 
be for ever stifled. And we pray that this great people may neither 
be blinded nor deceived by the fatal influence of such insane coun- 
sels. O Lord, silence for ever the tongue that shall wag with such 
madness and folly ; yet, we pray Thee, that Thou wilt give us Thine 
own peace, in Thine own time and way, through Jesus Christ. Amen." 



AMERICAN WAR CRUSADE; 

OB, 

PLAIN FACTS FOE EAENES1 MEN. 



BY J. R BALM E, 

AMERICAN CLERGYMAN. 

Author of " Magnet of the Gospel," " Mirror of the Gospel," " Lever of the Gospel," 
and " American States and Churches, and Reviewers Reviewed-" 



,; TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.' 



LONDON: 

Hamilton, adams, & co., pate'rnoster row, 

a'^d to be had of the author. 56 Islington, Liverpool, 



LETTER TO THE "TIMES" ffl SIR T. FOWELL BOTOX. 



Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, writing to the London Times, Feb- 
ruary 21, 1863, says 

" In your paper of to-day you ask whether the sons of Wilber- 
force and Buxton, who have all been brought up in the teach- 
ings of their fathers, now share the opinions of the present eman- 
cipation society as to the proclamation of President Lincoln ? If 
the proclamation means anything, it means to attack the weak 
point of the South by exciting insurrection among the slaves — 
an insurrection which would commence by producing untold 
misery to many isolated families of whites, and would inevitably 
end in wholesale massacre of the unarmed, ill-organised, and 
ignorant negroes. Can you seriously ask whether the sons of 
Wiiberforce or Buxton approve of this? I cannot doubt what 
view my father would have taken. There was nothing he more 
earnestly deprecated — nothing he so universally dreaded— as the 
revolt of the slaves. His letters and speeches during the battle 
of emancipation are full of reference to this great subject of 
anxiety. In a letter dated October 15, 1832, he writes: 'If the 
emancipation of the slaves were in my power, I could not dare to 
accomplish it without police regulations. These ought to be 
takeu instantly, for now our power of emancipation one way or 
another is fast drawing to a close: I mean that the negroes will 
take the work into their own handk^but whoever else is willing 
to undertake the weight of so enormous* a responsibility, I am not, 
without considering, the personal safety of all classes.' Again, in 
a debate in the House of Commons, June 12, 1833, he says: 
' Were an amendment of this plan to be moved and carried, and 
we were, in consequence, to lose this measure altogether, insurrec- 
tion would inevitably take place, and I confess I cannot with firm- 
ness contemplate so horrible a termination of slavery.' 

"I hope that no one will suspect, because none of my father's 
descendants have taken a part in: the recent emancipation meet- 
ings, that our abhorrence of slavery, or zeal for emancipation, has 
grown cold. I never was more strongly impressed than I am now 
with the folly, cruelty, and wickedness of slavery. I never was 
more convinced of the demoralising effect on both master and 
slave; yet, in the cause of the negro himself, I cannot regard with 
approval the act of Lincoln, which, if effective, must bring about 
so horrible a termination of slavery as a servile war. 
"Iam Sir, 

"Your Obedient Servant, 

" T. Fowell Buxton ? 




THE 



AMERICAN WAR CRUSADE. 



Two sins rise before us in America, which are of 
fearful and appalling magnitude, and involve us, as 
a people, in a criminality the most offensive to God 
and injurious to man. 

These sins are slavery, and one man's inferiority 
to another, one of which prevails in the South, the 
other in the North, shutting us out, as a people, 
from the court of morality and justice, and placing 
us beyond the pale of sympathy and aid amongst 
enlightened and upright men. 

These sins have gone on increasing from the era 
of American Independence to the present time, in 
consequence of the perverted maxims of philoso- 
phers and statesmen, and the corrupted teachings 
of professors and divines, until they have attracted 
the thunderbolts of Jehovah, and the lurid flashes of 
His vengeance in righteous retribution ; and this 
punishment is meted out, not only on the people of 



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PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



tke..J3-Qujbh, but on the more guilty.. inhabitants of 
.the-JSoxth, who have sinned against clearer light 
and stronger convictions, and, even now, there is 
no evidence of a change of mind towards sin as 
such, or deep humility before God on account of it. 

Although the country was settled with the Puri- 
tans, and, according to Mrs, Stowe, in her " Key to 
Uncle Tom," claims a pre-eminence in regard to 
the "more powerful influence of the clergy, and a 
greater religious ascendancy amongst the nations," 
those supposed clergy, not excepting her brother, 
Henry Ward Beecher, and the multitudes of avowed 
disciples referred to by her, have no visible hand 
in shaping our destiny in the present awful and 
rugged crisis, by the Word and Spirit of God, 
means which are alone owned, sanctified, and blest 
by Him. 

The diabolical barbarities and cold blooded atro- 
cities, butcheries, and miseries flowing out of the 
fratricidal war are utterly revolting and frightful 
to contemplate, and ought to call forth the earnest 
and most dignified remonstrances of Christian men 
everywhere against its continuance ; and, also, 
against the religious war crusaders, such as Cheever, 
Beecher, Sloan, Tyng, Do wring, Conway, and Mrs. 
Stowe, whose gospel of emancipation is not one of 
peace, but of " iron globes, torches of Greek fire, 
explosive biscuits/' famine, pestilence, slaughter, 
and blood. 

How mournful and humiliating to reflect, that 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



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in the abandonment of moral for military issues, 
our avowedly Christian men, with their mottos, 
" fight or die/' were the first to lead the way, com- 
mercial men the next to follow, then the idolaters 
of the Union, whilst "Progressive Friends," or 
Quakers, so called, and the Garrisonians or Parker- 
ites, who had been peace men at any price, and 
proclaimed the Federal Union to be a covenant 
with death and agreement with hell, brought up 
the rear. What a fall, when these men can now 
point to nothing but bullets, as the staple com- 
modity for their creed, ten commandments, and 
sermon on the mount ! Fallen and misguided as 
they are, one would have supposed, that as Peter 
the Hermit had the magnanimity to march at the 
head of his followers in his crusade, so they, or 
some of them, would have shown their genius, 
valour, and skill on the battle-field with the sword, 
but as yet this has been confined to their tongues 
and pens, showing that their cowardice is as great 
as their guilt, whilst the pleas which they put forth 
to sustain their position are inexcusable and un- 
justifiable, whether they may be religious, commer- 
cial, or national. 

Religiously they are placed in a terrible position, 
when, like Dr. Cheever, May 6, 1862, in Cooper's 
Institute, New York, they have to interpolate 
Christ's words of peace and goodwill with the 
brutal and bloody words of strife, and make Him 
say, "Go to Decapolis and preach as well as fight, 



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(announce) deliverance to the captives, as well as 
submission to the rebels;" or, like Dr. Tyng, whom 
Dr. Mackay, the correspondent of the Times, says, 
u Makes it the duty of the civil Magistrate to 
uproot crime with the sword urged into dictation 
by the priest/'* 

Their commercial pleas are equally unsatisfac- 
tory, when the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher confesses, 
in his Harper's Ferry sermon, that "our standard 
of morals has been commercial, and from a com- 
mercial stand-point we have taken our observa- 
tions." And how low and debasing that stand- 
point has been is shown in the same sermon, when 
Beecher says, " There can be no disputing the fact, 
that, for commercial causes, an element of slavery 
which had temporary refuge with us, granted by 
the unsuspecting fathers, has swollen to an unex- 
pected and unforeseen power, and, for the last fifty 
years, has held the administrative power of the 
country in its hands, has controlled patronage, and 
distributed appointments." 

But national pleas are equally untenable and 
delusive as the others. 

Stress is laid on the freedom power of the Con- 
stitution, one clause of which would have swept 
slavery with its concomitant evils away for ever. 
This was the Habeas Corpus Act, which provides 
that "no person be deprived of liberty without due 
process of law," and yet, in defiance of this clause, 
every slave has been stript of liberty without such 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 7 

process. In deference to the wishes of the slave- 
holders and commercial men of the North, this 
freedom power of the Constitution was sacrificed 
by those whom Beecher calls the "unsuspecting 
fathers/' and the reason assigned was, " They found 
slavery, and they left it among them because of the 
difficulty, the absolute impossibility of its removal." 

And this freedom power in the Constitution, so 
far as the black man is concerned, has slumbered 
ever since, and " been inoperative as a bull against 
a comet." And when Alice Hambleton, Dinah 
Mendenhall, Oliver Johnson, and sundry other 
Quakers, waited on President Lincoln, and pressed 
on his attention this freedom power in the Consti- 
tution, and reminded him of its binding power, he 
assented to its truth, but " it cannot be enforced at 
present in the South" said the President. " True," 
said the Quakers, " but you do not for all that give 
up the straggle! 1 Oh, no ! The struggle has been 
rather bloody since at Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, 
Murfreesboro, and other places, aod Lincoln and his 
government give no signs of weariness in the 
bloody work. Have the great charters of freedom 
been allowed to slumber in this country ? Can 
they not be enforced ? 

"But the 'Union' is, to loyal Americans, what 
the British throne and constitution are to British- 
ers," say our religious war crusaders. Suppose, for 
example, say they, that "Scotland, Ireland, or 
Wales were, by conspiracy, to present a demand to 



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PLAIN FACTS FOE EARNEST MEN. 



separate from the British throne and government, 
and jeopardise the throne, and the glorious consti- 
tutional liberties secured to this nation, under the 
laws of Providence, by the toil and blood of no^le 
sires, would they parley with the traitors ? " No. 
But, if the "glorious constitutional liberties" had 
lain a dead letter, unheeded and unneeded, like the 
Constitution in America ; or, what is worse still, 
the administrative power had perverted and mis- 
applied these constitutional liberties, so as to make 
their great charters of freedom an engine of despot- 
ism to subject millions to the grinding power of 
tyranny and oppression : What then ? Would not 
the British say, the sooner such a throne was sub- 
verted the better, and the government broken up, 
if they had no constitutional means of redress ? In 
such a case thousands and millions of voices would 
respond in the affirmative. But how does the 
matter stand in America? Not only have the 
great charters of freedom been inoperative, but a 
direct breach has been made through them by the 
wedge of compromise, so as to turn those great 
charters into instruments of injustice and cruelty, 
depriving millions of all constitutional means of 
redress, and subjecting them to a bondage, "one 
hour of which," said Jefferson, " exceeds ages of 
that we rose in rebellion to oppose;" and the 
whole nation, with a few exceptions, have looked 
silently on, whilst the administrators of the govern- 
ment are powerless and unable to meet the exigen- 



PLAIX FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



9 



cies of the case, except by revolution, which is now 
throwing the whole country into the gulf of ruin. 

To show the inefficiency and weakness of the 
Federal Government, Dr. Cheever, in his anti- 
British organ, the Principia, May 22, I860, 
says : " The States are supreme for wickedness, but 
the United States is impotent for protection and 
justice. The government of the individual State 
may compel the government of the United States 
to respect slavery, but the United States cannot 
compel the individual State to respect freedom. 
The government of the individual State may pre- 
vent the United States from making a slave of one 
of its citizens, but the United States cannot pro- 
tect one of its citizens from being made a slave by 
the States." And it is thus the case now stands 
between the Federal Government and the loyal 
slaveholding States of Missouri, Kentucky, and 
Delaware ; whilst, what is the worst of all, the 
slaves in those States have no access to the seat of 
power, or constitutional means of redress, and if 
they should attempt to run away, the loyal slave- 
holder could follow them to the steps of the 
national capitol, or into the White House, the Pre- 
sident's mansion, at Washington, and claim and 
seize his " chattels personal," and drag them back 
into bondage. What a country to claim analogy 
with Great Britain ! 

But it is added by the Federalists, in the lan- 
guage of Mrs. Stowe, "step after step has been 



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taken for liberty, chain after chain has fallen, till 
the march of our armies is choked and clogged by 
the glad flocking of emancipated slaves ; the day 
of final emancipation is set ; the border States 
begin to move in a voluntary consent ; universal 
freedom for all dawns like the sun in the distant 
horizon, and still no voice from England!' No 
voice of sympathy and encouragement ! No. The 
people of England don't believe in the gospel of 
emancipation by the sword. As - one of her noble 
sons has recently said, " Ours is not a gospel of 
blood and lust, to be enforced by the torches of 
Butler's negro brigade, and the bayonets of Siegel's 
German mercenaries." 

Besides, the Be v. Newman Hall, a votary of the 
Federalists, frankly avows, " We must be blind if 
we do not see how, by the operation of natural 
causes, God is punishing chiefly the South as the 
perpetrator of the wickedness, but also the North, 
for long and guilty connivance. There has been 
wicked compromise. To uphold a constitution of 
man's devising, God's laws have been set at nought. 
Slavery has been sanctioned and guaranteed in 
order to preserve the Union, and now, by that very 
slavery, the Union is broken up." 

There has been wicked compromise. No one 
has been more guilty of compromise than Mrs. 
Stowe, shewn in her description of Mrs. Shelby, 
whom in her key she makes a " Lady pious slave- 
holder ;" and also in her appeal, in the same Key, 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



11 



to a class of men, whom she calls " Christian slave- 
traders." Newman Hall says, "We cannot have 
sympathy with impenitent slavers. We cannot 
admit them to our holy sacraments, for they 
are violating every law of humanity, and trampling 
on the Gospel they have the audacity to profess. 
We dare not bid them, God speed. We cannot sit 
at the same table with them. We shrink from re- 
ceiving them into our houses. Our hand is pol- 
luted by grasping theirs. We loathe them as the 
representatives of the concentration of all villanies. 
They know it. Can there ever be alliance between 
us ? Mrs. Stowe says, Yes. Do you ask how ? 
By throwing over them a mantle of piety, and 
calling them Chrislicms. And in view of which 
Mrs. Stowe may suppress her resentment and with- 
hold her sarcasms at the noble-minded women of 
Great Britain, who have no wish to be inducted 
into her creed, or to shout, " Bressed be de Lord," 
with " Christian slave traders or slaveholders " so 
called. The women of England, although they 
have a common origin with Mrs. Stowe, have no 
common faith with her in " lady pious slavehold- 
ing," and no common cause in enforcing emancipa- 
tion by the cartridge or bayonet. 

The Bev. Henry Ward Beecher has generally 
been a strenuous and ardent supporter of compro- 
mises. In a comic sermon which he preached on 
Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1861, he said, "A 
direct political emancipation was impossible. We 



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were bound to conduct the war in accordance with 
the constitution, or else acknowledge the failure of 
our republican institutions. He wished he could 
declare political emancipation. He wished Adam 
had not sinned and his posterity been affected. 
But that did not help the matter. He wished our 
fathers had stood out against the compromises of 
the constitution ; for a serpent just hatched was 
not half so dangerous as a full-grown serpent. We 
had declared our fealty to the constitution, and we 
could not now break the pact. The war had not 
driven us into revolution. The constitution was 
not superior to right, conscience, or liberty ; but 
we must keep our plighted faith, and when we 
could not abide by our promise, we had better 
stand apart as two peoples." 

And in referring to the present terrible war, Dr. 
Cheever, in a Memorial adopted by him and others 
in the Church of the Puritans, New York, Dec, 22, 
1862, says, "We believe the whole cause of our 
disasters to be in our continued complicity with 
that crime of human slavery, which is the founda- 
tion and inspiring demon of the rebellion itself. 
Had we withdrawn ourselves from that complicity, 
by obeying the command of God at the outset, the 
justice and mercy of Heaven were pledged for our 
protection and success, the Divine frown would 
have been upon our enemies, we would have secured 
the blessing of God, and commanded the sympathy 
and respect of all nations. 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



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"But the moment we ourselves re-entered into 
complicity with the very wickedness which was 
the foundation of the rebellion, we threw away the 
immense superiority of our moral position, de- 
scended to a level with that of the rebels, deprived 
ourselves of the possibility of appealing, as our 
fathers did in the war of the Ke volution, to the 
Judge of all the earth for the justice of our cause 
and the rectitude of our intentions; and went so 
far as to inform foreign nations that no moral prin- 
ciple was involved in our quarrel, and that the 
position of every state and all persons should be 
the same as before. This annoucement was suffi- 
cient to set both God and man against us. 

" We chose war without emancipation, and God 
gave us our request with disaster and defeat as the 
consequence. We have ourselves deliberately built 
up and prolonged the confederate treason, by the 
determination to avoid striking at its cause. We 
have provoked the indignation and challenged the 
avenging justice of the Almighty, by resolving that 
we would not decree the deliverance of the enslaved 
till this measure should become a necessity indis- 
pensable to the existence of our own government. 
And even now, when calamity and defeat have 
pressed us to this movement, we have taken all the 
dignity and virtue from it, by declaring it to be 
adopted as a mere military necessity, and by com- 
bining with it the offer of continued slavery to as 
many rebel states as will return to practise that 



1 % PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 

wickedness under the government and guarantee of 
our own union. 

" Still the guiding star of our policy seems to be 
to crush the rebellion with as little injury to 
slavery, and as little depreciation of slave property, 
as possible." 

In the presence of the above avowals, conces- 
sions, complaints, and remonstrances, how could the 
Broughams, Buxtons, Gladstones, Russells, Palmer- 
stons, or the noble sons and daughters of old Eng- 
land, give their sympathy and aid to the Federalists 
of America? 

But who are the men who presume to approach 
the President with "the cry of freedom against 
slavery, and not freedom entering into a new com- 
pact with slavery, or making use of slavery as a 
bribe for the purchase of slavery "—men who are 
shouting " freedom or nothing. No more compro- 
mise with slavery. Give us freedom" to fight for 
against slavery." 

The Eev. Dr. Cheever and Dr. Nathan Brown, 
two of the men who signed the above document, 
have not been very remarkable for their embodi- 
ment of the " no compromise theory " in their own 
history and experience. 

We have fearful illustration of this in the case 
of Dr. Nathan Brown, who in 1860 was a director 
of the Bible Union, a society which contains a long 
list of Christian slaveholders so-called, and not only 
a director but a member of a committee in connec- 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 1 5 



tion with the same, which voted slaveholding 
monies, and Bibles wrung out of the blood of the 
slave and whipt out of their muscles for the " Free 
Mission Society's missions. And the Eev. Dr. 
Cheever is in the same anomalous position, as Hon. 
Member of the Corporate Board of American Mis- 
sions, a society which has always, like the Bible 
Union, compromised with pious slaveholders and 
negro-haters so called. It is reported that in a 
remarkable prayer recently uttered by Dr. Cheever. 
at Cooper's Institute, New York, in the presence of 
a mixed assembly of black and white men, that he 
called up the soul of John Brown from the vast 
depths of eternity, and prayed that in accordance 
with the popular hymn, " the soul of John Brown 
might march on," at the head of the northern 
armies, to lead them to victory, might animate the 
councils of the president, declaring at the same 
time, " that the soul in question was big enough 
for any twenty of the Federal generals/' 

If John Brown was now alive he would not be 
found marching with negro-haters to make the 
sword leap at the the throats of negro-traders, or 
abetting them. Neither would he allow his name 
to be on the books of pro-slavery missions or Bible 
union boards, like Dr. Cheever or Dr. Brown. How- 
ever big his soul might be, in connection with the 
little souls of the twenty generals referred to, or 
that of President Lincoln, his soul would have loathed 
the contamination and pollution of those old corrupt 



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PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



delinquent boards as much as he did that of the 
pro-slavery clergymen who went to pray and con- 
dole with him in his prison cell before his execu- 
tion, but whom he summarily dismissed until they 
had got their slaveholding or pro-slavery guilt washed 
from their consciences. " I have no objections to 
pray for you," said Mr. Brown, " but you shall not 
pray for me/jf 

With sucn compromises, inconsistencies, detest- 
able policies, and departures from great principles, 
would it not have been better, as Henry Ward 
Beecher suggested in one of his sermons referred to, 
that "the two peoples should stand apart/' In 
the history of the past/whenever the sword has been 
drawn in the cause of freedom, "it has," says the 
editor of the Athenceum, in an able review of war 
crusades and freedom : — " It has found the cause 
invariably put back. It knows of many a servile 
war, but of none in which the ultimate fact was 
favourable to the insurgent slave." But the Rev. 
William Taylor, author of the " Model Preacher," in 
one of his Model Treatises, designated " Cause and 
Probable Results of the Civil War in America," says, 
" the institution (slavery) cannot be removed by 
moral appliances, as in the glorious example of the 
British government in her West India Colonies. 
Here," he says, " the friends of freedom had direct 
access to the seat of power, the throne, and parlia- 
ment. * * * But had Wilberforce or his co- 
adjutors gone into the slave states of America and 



PLAIN FACTS FOE EARNEST MEN. 



17 



raised their voices in favour of freedom, they would 
have been hung most likely. It could not be 
reached by the United States Congress, because" 
says the reverend gentleman, "the question belonged 
to the State legislation. It can only be reached, 
therefore, by some direct providential interposition, 
such as a military necessity so palpable as to com- 
bine the great loyal masses in one united purpose 
to overthrow it." Britishers have direct access to 
the seat of power, but in America we have wheels 
within wheels, and the great fly wheel of Congress 
cannot control the little State wheels which profess 
to be subordinate to the Federal wheel. Subordi- 
nate. No. Slavery has caused a break down and 
a smash up of the machinery. 

" Had Wilberforce and his coadjutors gone into 
the slave States of America, and raised their voices 
in favour of freedom," he says, "they would most 
likely have been hung." Very probable. But 
why should their services have been necessary? 
Has the Northern Methodist Episcopalian Church, 
of which Tajdor is a member, no conferences, 
churches, or members in the slave States ? And if 
so, why should the above men have been hung, 
had they gone into Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, 
Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, or Texas?' Surely 
the seven slaveholding conferences of the above 
church, and their multitudes of churches and mem- 
bers, would have afforded them an asylum of liberty, 
and stood between them and danger, more especially 



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as Mr. Taylor says, "all the religious bodies of the 
North, whose organizations, extended into the 
South, have fought a series of ecclesiastical battles 
on the question, as a matter of principle and con- 
science, resulting in their separation on that ground 
alone/ 5 whilst the Methodist Episcopal Church was 
rent nearly by the halves on that ground." It 
could not be that the members and clergymen of 
the above seven Conferences that are connected with 
the Northern half of the Methodist Episcopalian 
Church, fought very hard for freedom, were very 
conscientious in the matter, felt much of principle 
or conscience, or were intensely anti-slavery or dis- 
tinguished foreigners, such as Wilberforce needed 
not to have dreaded being in jeopardy in their lives 
or limbs had they visited those parts of the South. 
Mr. Taylor says, "if the Northern Conferences could 
have accepted a slave-holding bishop and consented 
to complicity with slavery, they would have avoided 
an incalculable amount of trouble and expense, and 
saved to their organization nearly half-a-million of 
members who went off South." Numerically and 
pecuniarily the Northern conferences sustained an 
immense loss. They were, from the first, constitu- 
tionally an anti-slavery church, believing with 
Wesley, their founder, that " slavery was the sum of 
all villainies," they could not conscientiously, and 
hence would not, sacrifice their anti-slavery 'princi- 
ples. 

The above Mr. Taylor presents as facts in the 



PLAIN FACTS FOE, EARNEST MEN. 



19 



book already referred to. But, if such be facts, we 
may trury ask, what are falsehoods ? In the 
authentic history of the case it is affirmed that 
Bishop Andrews became a slaveholder. "The Book 
of Discipline, as it now stands/' says the Northern 
Independent, April 1857, a Methodist newspaper, 
published at Auburn, New York, — the editor of 
the above says, " As the Discipline now stands, 
slaveholding in the ministry is the rule, non-slave- 
holding the exception. We let all preachers hold 
slaves if they will consent to be local and unor- 
dained. We will consent to ordain them, and let 
them travel, slaveholders though they be, if wicked 
slaveholders are disposed to make a law forbidding 
emancipation." Acquainted with the above ridi- 
culous discrimination, Bishop Andrews doubtless 
reasoned within himself, if it be right for my 
brother local preacher to hold a slave, it is right 
for me, and, consequently, he bought slaves, was 
suspended, and went off with half-a-million of 
members in the South. But what anti-slavery 
principle was there in this ? There was no more 
anti-slavery in the matter than there was honesty 
to be found in the discrimination between clerical 
and lay theft ! This was the sole cause of division, 
and, therefore, no question of principle could divide 
the Methodist Episcopal Church of the North from 
that of the South. Moreover, if the Northern one 
was anti-slavery, it would not receive slaveholders 
into its communion and membership. 



20 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



But the editor of the Richmond Christian Ad- 
vocate says, " It is known to you and to me, and 
to many, many others," addressing himself to 
Northern Methodists, in answer to Bishop Simpson 
and Dr. M'Clintock, delegates to the Wesleyan 
Methodists in England, who maintained that the 
Northern Methodist Episcopal Church was anti- 
slavery — the above editor says, " It is known to 
you and me, and many, many others, that thou- 
sands and thousands of slaves are owned and 
worked from sun to sun by members and ministers 
in the Church in which Bishop Simpson and Dr. 
M'Clintock are ministers." And not only does that 
Church contain slaveholders, but slave-breeders, as 
members, if not ministers. The Rev. H. Mattison, 
a travelling preacher in the Northern Methodist 
Episcopal Church, in a letter addressed to the 
Leeds Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society, and pub- 
lished in their report for 1860, says : — 

"For myself, I am fully satisfied from figures 
that ' will not lie/ and from enquiries and corre- 
spondence upon the subject for years, that we can- 
not have to-day less than 1 0,000 slaveholders and 
100,000 slaves in our Northern Methodist Episco- 
pal Church ; and the number is rapidly increasing 
every year. And, still worse, our people raise, 
buy, and sell slaves, as others do, without rebuke 
or hindrance. The territory covered by our Church 
in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Mis- 
souri, and Arkansas, contains one million of slaves 



PLAIN FACTS FOE EARNEST MEN. 



21 



— one quarter of all the slaves in the Union. This 
belt of States constitute the great breeding ground 
of slavery for the citron, sugar, and rice regions of 
the farther South. About 50,000 slaves go hence 
annually towards the Gulf States. The annual sale 
from Virginia alone is 20,000, amounting to thir- 
teen millions of dollars. Missouri sold some 12,000 
last year to go ' down the river' to Mississippi and 
Texas ; and yet her late census shows her to have 
more slaves to-day than she had five years ago. 
Now, the slaves of Methodists in all this region 
increase as fast as do the slaves of others. What 
then becomes of them ? Do they free them ? 
Seldom or never. Are their slave families expand- 
ing twice as fast as those of others ? Not at all. 
They are sold, as other breeders sell their slaves, 
and there is no denying it. I write it with shame 
and sorrow, but it is true ; and the Christian world 
ought to know it before we are utterly debauched 
and ruined/' 

And in the effort made to change the charter on 
statute law in the above Church in their last con- 
ference, held at Buffalo, in 1860, we see what was 
the character of their legislation against slavery on 
that occasion : — 



The Chapter as it stands, reads, 

" Quest. — What shall be done 
for the extirpation of the evil 
of slavery? 

" Ans. — 1. We declare that we 



The Chapter as proposed by the 
Committee and adopted hy the 
Conference, reads, 

" Quest. — What shall be done 
for the extirpation of slavery ? 



/ 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



are as much as ever convinced 
of the great evil of slavery; 
therefore, no slaveholder shall 
be eligible to any official station 
in our Church hereafter, where 
the laws of the State in which 
he lives will admit of emanci- 
pation, and permit the liberated 
slave to enjoy his freedom. 

"2. When any travelling 
preacher becomes an owner of 
a slave or slaves, by any means, 
he shall forfeit his ministerial 
character in our Church, unless 
he execute, if it be practicable, 
a legal emancipation of such 
slaves, conformably to the laws 
of the State in which he lives. 

" 3. All our preachers shall 
prudently enforce upon our 
members the necessity of teach- 
ing their slaves to read the 
Word of God; and to allow 
them time to attend upon the 
public worship of God on our 
regular days of divine service." 



" Ans- — We declare that we 
are as much as ever convinced 
of the evil of slavery. We be- 
lieve that buying, selling, or 
holding of human beings as 
chattels, is inconsistent with 
the Golden Rule, and with that 
rule in our Discipline which 
requires * all who wish to remain 
among us to do no harm and to 
avoid evil of every kind.' — We, 
therefore, affectionately admon- 
ish all our preachers and people 
to keep themselves pure from 
this great evil, and to seek its 
extirpation by all lawful and 
Christian means." 



Mr. Mattison says, "Seasoning from these sub- 
stantial premises, not a few in the General Confer- 
ence desired something like this to follow the above 
declaration of principles : — 

" therefore no slaveholder shall hereafter be elig- 
ible to admission into the Methodist Episcopal 
Church ; and those now in the Church are required 
either to emancipate their slaves or voluntarily 
retire ; and, in case they neglect or refuse to do 



PLAIN FACTS FOE EARNEST MEN. 



23 



either, they are to be dealt with as in other eases 
of immorality/ 

' ' Nothing short of this would at all correspond 
with the declaration of principles. But was any- 
thing of the kind adopted ? 

" Instead of prohibiting what is declared to be 
e contrary to the laws of God and nature/ and 
inconsistent with our general rules, the new chap- 
ter suddenly tapers down to the following honied 
admonition : — 

" ' We therefore affectionately admonish all our 
preachers and people to keep themselves pure from 
this great evil, and seek its extirpation by all law- 
ful and Christian means.' 

" e What a fall was this, my countrymen ! ' 

" And this is the whole of the new legislation 
against slavery, except that a law prohibiting the 
ordination of slaveholders to the ministry was 
stricken from the discipline. The new chapter w r as 
declared not to be mandatory, or, in other words, 
to be without executive force or meaning ; and 
there we now stand. We have lost all prohibition 
of slaveholding, both in the laity and ministry, 
and have gained a tolerable, though rather feeble, 
declaration of principles, oiled over with an affec- 
tionate admonition ! The administration on the 
Border were not only whitewashed but approved, 
with all its toleration of official and ministerial 
slaveholding ; and, on the whole, so far as practical 
slaveholding is concerned, the prospects of the 



24 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



Border was never more bright. Not a slaveholder 
will retire, or give up his slaveholding ; and minis- 
ters as well as private members can go into slave- 
holding, without even violating an obsolete discip- 
linary prohibition. There will, therefore, be far 
more, instead of less, slaveholding in our Church 
for the four years to come." 

And the history of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church is the history of all the principal religious 
bodies in America whose* organizations extended 
into the South. 

With such a history in our principal denomina- 
tions, how could the seat of power be reached in 
the slave States, or the great fly-wheel of Federal 
Congress be repaired, so as to replace the broken 
cogs in order to make the little State fly-wheels 
move in subordination ? Here was a noble and 
glorious work to be done by Christian men, anti- 
slavery from principle, not only to purge slavery 
out of the Churches, and secure to the free negro 
his rights, but to repair the broken-down machin- 
ery of the government. Moral appliances were at 
their command which, if made available, would, 
under God's blessing, have met and removed every 
conceivable difficulty. But this work was too slow 
and tedious for our avowedly Christian anti-slavery 
men, hence their dreadful haste to let out deluges 
of blood in their war crusade, and to merge the 
country in one common ruin. And, as the war 
progressed, no portion of our people in America 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 25 

have been more intoxicated with the fumes of war 
than our religious war crusaders. Bulletins have 
been issued in the New York Independent, headed, 
"Peace Items for General M'Clellan," which com- 
menced, "The way to increase our army to a 
million of men — fight ; the way to gain the respect 
of England and France — fight/' . . . Military Re- 
vival Recruiting Prayer Meetings have been held 
in Northern Churches to fill up the army. Regi- 
ments of Federal soldiers have marched through 
Northern cities, on their way to the battle-field, 
singing : — 

" John Brown's body is mouldering in the grave, 
His soul is marching on." 

Bloody battles have been fought at Bull's Run, 
Antietam, Fredericksburg, Murfreesboro, Vicks- 
burgh, and numerous other places, alternating with 
victory on one side and then on the other. Con- 
scripts and drafts have been resorted to, to fill up 
the places of the wounded and the dead. Prisons 
and forts have been filled up with "suspects" 
Enormous piles of treasury notes have been put 
into circulation, containing promises to pay, without 
the means to make them valid. Immense loans 
have been raised, and a tremendous war- tax created. 
On the 15th January 1863, gold was 48 per 
cent, premium, and exchange 163. And the coun- 
try is advancing with such accelerated speed into 
the whirlpool of destruction, that some of our war 
fanatics are beginning to tremble for their fate. 



26 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



The following, from the New York Independent, 
shews what kind of a "heart beat" they have 
got :— 

"A nation bankrupt, is a nation ruined. It 
may still have a name and a place on the maps, 
but it is practically extinct, dead. It may have a 
large population, and that inherent strength which 
numbers give, but, like the strength of a caged 
lion, a manacled giant, or an imprisoned warrior, it 
is useless. It may have fruitful valleys and fertile 
hills, thriving manufactories and temporary indivi- 
dual prosperity, numerous railroads and far-reach- 
ing canals, mines of mineral wealth and all the 
riches of institutional greatness and magnificence, 
an immense army and a powerful navy, a good gov- 
ernment, honest, God-fearing, man-loving rulers, — 
but if it be tied, fettered, and anchored in bank- 
ruptcy, what is it good for ? It were better that 
it should perish, and its name be blotted out for 
ever. A bankrupt nation, like an individual in 
such a dilemma, should go into liquidation. It 
should wind up its political affairs, dispose of its 
assets of name, place, and power, and honestly, be- 
fore God and the people, yield up its executive life, 
and ask funeral rites and ceremonies — a decent 
burial from the sight of man. If we, as a nation, 
have Bible wisdom, we shall foresee the great evils 
of bankruptcy, now threatening us, and hide from 
them. We shall use, without a moment's delay, 
our strength and power to crush the monster now 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



27 



gnawing at our vitals. We shall, with the martial 
tramp of irresistible forces, overwhelm our enemies 
and end for ever the great conflict between free- 
dom and slavery. 

"We are endangering more than liberty by 
longer halting between two opinions. We are im- 
perilling our very existence — our national life. We 
shall soon be bound with chains which can never 
be broken. We are blindly and rapidly floating 
into the depths of bankruptcy. We must now 
fight or we must die. The nation may will 
rightly, our armies may cover every hill top, and 
our rulers be honest, patriotic, and pure ; but 
nevertheless we must now fight, or, as a nation, we 
must die — this is inevitable. 

" The voice from our national treasury is, fight, 
or we die. 

" The voice from the tribune of our political 
power is, fight, or we die. 

"The voice from every workshop and every 
manufacturing village in the Union is, fight, or we 
die. 

" The voice of a burdened nation of tax-payers 
is, fight, or we die. 

" The voice of every ship's crew, sailing in peril 
of pirates is, fight, or we die. 

" The voice of all the great moneyed institutions 
of the nation is, fight, or we die. 

" The voice of merchants, bankers, and of all busi- 
ness men is, fight, or we die. 



28 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



"The voice, trumpet-tongued, from our currency 
troubles is, fight, or we die. 

"The voice from every half-frightened, gold- 
hoarding miser is, fight, or we die. 

" The voice of widows and the fatherless, and of 
thousands who are now mourning the loss of in- 
come is, fight, or we die. 

"The voice of soldiers, — sick, wounded, and dy- 
ing by thousands in hospitals and Southern prisons 
is, fight, or we die. 

"The voice of every true general, either from 
West Point or West — anywhere, is, fight, or we die. 

"The voice from New York, and every other 
commercial city of the Union is, fight, or we die. 

" The voice of every despairing, homeless, tyrant- 
hating exile, the world over, is, fight, or we die. 

" The voice of the millions of slaves, bleeding 
and manacled, is, fight, or we die. 

" The voice of Liberty, from the Poles to the 
Equator ; the voice of the round WORLD, groaning 
in sin and hoping in God ; the voice of high 
Heaven, as plainly as ever thundered from Mount 
Sinai, is urging us now to duty. 

" Will you hear that voice, President Lincoln, for 
whom thousands are now praying on every shore, 
in every land of every Christian nation ? 

" Will you hear it, Secretary Seward, — war horse 
of liberty — whose ear has never yet failed to hear 
the cry of the poor and oppressed ? 

" Will you hear it, Secretary Chase, overwhelmed 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



29 



and almost bowed down with unparalleled burdens 
and cares, — nobly , heroically, and successfully battl- 
ing with a nation's financial troubles ? 

" Will you hear it, Secretary Stanton, while a 
million loyal men stand ready to pour out their 
heart's blood to save us ? 

" Will you hear it, Secretary Welles, and spread 
every canvass, man every gun, and use every effort 
to gain for yourself and our matchless navy fresh 
glory and honour ? 

" Will you near it, Secretary Bates, and boldly 
and speedily act in behalf of thousands of Union men 
in peril of life and property all through the South, 
and especially in your own liberty-seeking, rebel- 
hating state ? 

" Will you hear it, Secretary Blair, from whom 
we have a right to expect an open ear when so 
much is threatened and may be lost for ever? 

" Will you hear it, Secretary Smith, from whose 
home on the priaries thrice ten thousand hearts are 
now crying for a nation's salvation ? 

"Will you, Generals -in-Chief, hear it, and stop 
fault-finding ? Will you admit, as an experiment, 
that there are several other places in the country 
beside West Point ? Will you go anywhere as 
directed? Will you fight in front, and not ten 
miles in the rear of your army ? Don't, for once, 
be afraid of hurting the rebels, who have already 
cost us a quarter of a million of precious lives. 
Leave your dignity and your importance for some 



30 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



more appropriate place than the battle-field, and be 
quite willing, we pray yon, that one or two other 
generals should do a little of something for our 
country as well as yourselves. 

" Will the army hear it ? Yes, we know they 
will, for they are already ahead of the Government, 
ahead of their generals, and would be ahead of the 
rebels, if they were permitted the opportunity. 

The great heart of the nation cries out, Put 
down the rebellion ! Crush the enemy. Stop the 
wasting of lives. Save us from bankruptcy." 

The war, therefore, which was considered a mili- 
tary necessity, by the religious war crusaders, to 
subjugate the South in order to destroy slavery, — 
by commercial men in the North to keep the trade 
of the South in their own hands, and to promote 
their own agrandizement, and by the Unionists 
from a false pride and love of country to support 
their tottering idol, which the Eev. Newman Hall 
says, "slavery has broken up," — this insane and 
bloody war is now " necessary/' says Beecher in the 
above, " war manifestoes/' or " they will rapidly float 
into the depths of bankruptcy." 

At the commencement of the " War Crisis," our 
religious war enthusiasts turned to our Negro-hating 
Moses, in the person of President Lincoln, and in 
" strange rhythmical chant" sung the Psalms of what 
was to be the new " modern exodus," combining the 
" barbaric fire of the Marsellaise with the religious 
fervour of the old Hebrew prophet" — fire which was 



PLAIN FACTS FOE EAENEST MEN. 



31 



to nerve Lincoln, our modern Moses, for the duties 
of his mission, and turn him into a grand heroic 
personage, but to send terror into the heart of the 
slave-holding Pharaoh, Jeff. Davis. 
Hence they sung — 

" Oh, go down Moses, 
Way down into Egypt's land ! 
Tell king Pharaoh 

To let my people go ! 
Stand away dere, 
Stand away dere, 
And let my people go ! 

" Oh, Pharaoh, said he, would go 'cross ! 
Let my people go ! 
Oh ! Pharaoh and his hosts were lost ! 

Let my people go ! 
You may hinder me here, 
But me can't go up dere, 
Let my people go. 

" Oh, Moses, stretch your hand across ! 
Let my people go ! 
And don't get lost in the wilderness — 

Let my people go. 
He sits in de heavens, 
And answers prayers, 
Let my people go ! " 

What a ridiculous farce to compare such a man as 
Lincoln to Moses ! 

During the progress of the war our modern Moses 
Lincoln, so called, has not dared to go down into 
(Egypt) the South, but what has been more con- 



32 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



genial to himself, he has sent his multitudinous 
hosts, not in the way of merciful interposition to 
the slave, but with ineradicable hate and implacable 
vengeance to annihilate (Pharaoh) Jeff. Davis and 
his minions. 

The Eev. Henry Ward Beecher was so elated 
with the advance of our modern Moses Lincoln's 
" Israelitish army/' that he predicted Pharaoh and 
his hosts, in the persons of Jeff. Davis and his 
armies, on their advance to meet it, " would be 
chucked into the Red Sea by God." But as the 
miracle was withheld that was to annihilate them, 
vast numbers of the Northern Israelitish army so 
called, got chucked into the Red Sea at Bull's Run, 
on the banks of the Chicahominy, at Fredericks- 
burg, Vicksburg, and other places. 

But as the above disasters were traced to the 
mutable counsels of cunning men, weaving politi- 
cians and fault-finding generals, who fought ten 
miles in the rear of the army, a great and immut- 
able principle was to be struck, which would 
bring up every general, officer, and private to the 
post of duty amongst the Northern Israelites, 
armed with the triple armour of a just cause, and 
lead them with feelings of unbounded transport 
and joy to annihilate their enemies, repair the mis- 
chiefs of slavery, and introduce the reign of univer- 
sal liberty. On the 2 2d of September 1862 an in- 
timation was given by our " modern Moses * Lin- 
coln, that this great immutable principle was to be 



PLAIN FACTS FOR, EARNEST MEN. 33 



announced; and that on the 1st January 1863, 
he would be the porter to open the way to it- — the 
instrument to lift the silver trumpet of liberty, 
whose blast, said Beecher, " would roll through the 
forest, sweep along the mountain side, spread wide 
over the priaries, be heard on the hither and 
thither ocean, causing the waves of the Pacific and 
the Atlantic to lift themselves up and sound to- 
gether their notes of gladness/' In a word, it was 
to sweep across the Atlantic, be hailed with acclama- 
tion in this liberty-loving country, cause triumphal 
arches to be erected in honour of the event, pro- 
duce the merry peals of bells, light up bonfires on 
every hilltop, and bring together monster crowds in 
every town and village to celebrate with gladness 
such a boon to humanity. 

The 1st of January 1863 has come, and instead 
of a world's jubilee there is a world's scorn ; for in- 
stead of striking the rock of great and immutable 
principles with his pronunciamento, he has only 
opened up a new and more powerful explosion of 
the war passion, inaugurated a new era of disaster 
and strife, split up his own minions into factions, 
and helped to accelerate his own doom with that of 
the country he so miserably represents. 

what a mockery in our "modern Moses" to 
confer freedom where he has no power, and confirm 
slavery where he has power; to say to the loyal 
slaveholder, your slaves shall be preserved as a re- 
ward of your loyalty, whilst to the disloyal slave- 



34 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



holder he says, your disloyalty shall be punished 
with the loss of your slaves. Whatever heart-beat 
there may be to such inhumanity from the people 
of the New World, there can be none in the Old 
World amongst judicious and sensible men. Here 
the cry is measures and not men — principles and 
not dollars. 

Such is the immeasiirable calamity which has 
befallen us in America, in the war policy which 
has obtained and brought with it such frightful 
calamities, and fearful and widespread horrors. It 
is consolitary, however, to know that the issue was 
not in the hands of our " modern Moses " Lincoln, 
— our religious war crusaders, Cheever, Beecher, Mrs 
Stowe, and Co., — our commercial men, who are 
now trembling for their Morrell Tariffs and en- 
trepots of trade — or our idolaters of the Union, 
who speak, and think, and write as if the world 
would not move on should the American Republic 
break up. No, God has taken the issue out of 
all their hands ; and as John Bright truly said in a 
recent speech in Birmingham, " He was bringing 
about a great transaction in history/' — a transac- 
tion which will level with the dust his "Model 
Republic" and demonstrate beyond controversy 
that America, no more than Rome or Babylon, can 
harden itself against God and prosper. 

Dark, therefore, as the scenes are which we now 
behold in America, no truth is more palpable than 
this, that God has come out of His place to make 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



35 



inquisition for the blood of the slave, and the 
oppressions of multitudes "who wear a different skin 
to their fellowmen ; and, whilst the guilt of slavery 
has caused Him to open the magazines of His ven- 
geance to punish the slaveholder, in His righteous 
retribution He will not allow the man who treats the 
Negro as belonging to an inferior race, and subjects 
him to every imaginable insult, to escape the just 
desert of his sins. In the sight of God both sins 
are of the deepest dye, involving each in the deepest, 
basest, and most atrocious rebellion against Him. 
One says to the Negro, if you exist in America, it 
must be as a slave; the other, says, if you exist, 
it must not be in America, but in Liberia,, or Abbeo- 
kuta. One avows that God made him to be a 
"chattel-personal;" the other swears vengeance 
against him, and declares that he must be colonised — 
a thing not easily to be accomplished, if the Negro 
were willing to go. Need we wonder, therefore, 
that God's judgments should be a great deep in 
our guilty land. Our wonder is, that He should 
have so long borne with our impious treachery, fraud, 
and blood-guiltiness, as a nation. 

It is no less manifest, that a gross and terrible 
delusion prevails among the avowed disciples in 
America, in their appeals to the materia] sword in- 
stead of the sword of God's Spirit, the word of God. 
Dark was the hour in our country's history when 
the Rev. Henry T. Cheever called his church together 



36 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



in the autumn of 1859, and adopted the following 
resolutions : — 

" Resolved that it was held to be manifestly 
and imperatively the duty of the President of the 
United States promptly to enforce the laws, and to 
put down rebellion and treason, now upheld and 
perpetuated in South Carolina, by all the disposable 
force of the army and navy of the United States. 

" Resolved, that we declare our deliberate opinion, 
that all the Christian people of the country should, 
and that an overwhelming majority of them will, 
sustain the President in stfch a decisive suppression 
of the rankest treason and rebellion. 

" Resolved, that if he should not do this as being 
due both to the safety and dignity of such a people, 
that he be further impeached at the bar of the 
Senate of the United States." 

The above was the first war-spark that has pro- 
duced such a tremendous conflagration in our land 
— -the first war-cloud that has now made the heavens 
black with darkness, emitting fiery flashes to blast 
what is lovely, beautiful, and fair, and reduce our 
country to a heap of ruin. No sooner was the above 
spark lighted in the Congregational Church, Jewett 
City, Connecticut, than Dr. Cheever added fuel to 
the flame, as in a thanksgiving sermon in the church 
of the Puritans, New York, Nov. 24, 1859, he 
appealed to his people, exclaiming, " was it in your 
power, it is beyond question your duty and my duty 
to take horns of powder, torches of Greek fire, per- 



PLAIN FACTS FOK EAKNEST MEN. 



37 



cussive caps, and explosive biscuits, and hurl them 
into the heart of the South, to set the whole slave 
population into a sudden revolt for the assertion of 
their own freedom/' 

Then the Kev. Henry Ward Beech er, in a terriWe 
tilt against slavery, to get at the Seceders, it is 
said by the reporter of the New York Times, Dec. 
15, 1860, appeared six inches taller than usual, 
with his eyes flashing fire on Jeff. Davis and the 
Southerns, whom he designated as Pharaoh and his 
hosts, gave the charge to the Northerns in scriptural 
language, "Speak to the children of Israel that they 
go forward, Exod. xiv. 15. " Right before us rolled 
the sea," cried Beecher, " red, indeed, for there is 
blood in it. The word of God is, go on. Give me 
war redder than blood and fiercer than fire, that I 
may retain my faith in liberty" These sentiments, 
said the reporter, "caused the uprising of many 
hundreds of people, accompanied with waving of 
hats and handkerchiefs, cheers, hurrahs, and shouts, 
which made the building ring ; producing one of 
the most remarkable and impressive scenes ever 
witnessed in that church." 

After then the war spirit spread with amazing 
rapidity in the churches of the Free States so called. 
" Twenty churches on a night," writes Manhattan, 
" hold prayer meetings to get recruits for the army." 
And what is the language of the clergy on these 
occasions? Here is an instance. The Rev. J. W. 
Sloane, pastor of the third Reformed Presbyterian 



38 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



Church, New York, was reported in the newspapers 
to have said, in a speech abounding with similar 
atrocities, " That it was better that the six millions 
of white men, women, and children of the South 
should be slaughtered, than that slavery should not 
be extinguished." And being censured by an 
editor for expressing such atrocity, Mr. Sloane 
replied, that "What he really said was only as 
follows : But supposing that emancipation should 
lead to insurrection. Let this, which I by no 
means admit, be for the ir time granted, then, I 
affirm, that it is better, fat better, that every man, 
woman, and child in every rebel State should perish 
in one widespread, bloody, and indiscriminate 
slaughter; better that the land should be a Sahara 
— be, as when God destroyed the Canaanites, or 
overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah— than that this 
rebellion should be successful/' And, "Mark our 
words,'' says Mrs. Stowe, in her reply to the women 
of England, "if we succeed, the children of these 
very men who are now fighting us will rise up to 
call us blessed." Blessed ! For what ? For lay- 
ing waste their lands, pillaging their houses, burn- 
ing their cities, treating ladies as women of the 
town, ravishing young females, massacreing inno- 
cent men in cold blood at the instigation of General 
M'Neil, imprisoning their clergy because they would 
not pray for President Lincoln, placing their lives 
and property in the hands of military governors, 
who urge, as in the case of Brigadier General Dowe, 



V 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 39 

" that they must not think it hard if they suffer 
wrongfully % " 

No, there is no blessedness in the above, or in 
the soddening of the battle-fields with rivers of 
blood, already made memorable with horrid but- 
cheries ; and, as those historical and tragical scenes 
flit before them, they will no more make the 
children of the Southerners revere the people of the 
North, or pay homage to their genius or chivalry, 
than the scenes at Yorktown, Lexington, Concord, 
or Bunker Hill, lead Americans to revere the 
Britishers. When we look at the bitter struggle 
as it now moves along in its bloody and devastat- 
ing course, the words of Milton sound strangely in 
our ears: — 

u For never can true reconcilement grow, 
Where words of deadly hate have pierced so deep." 

And should the war crusaders succeed, with their 
gospel of torches, faggots, fire, and sword, in conquer- 
ing and devastating the South, the slaves whom 
they had freed from the galling tyranny of their 
masters would not feel themselves, amidst Northern 
treatment, to be "a heap much more men," when 
sold on the auction block in Northern cities as 
paupers — recently illustrated in the case of a 
number of fugitive slaves in Illinois — neither would 
they lift up their hands in blessing and shout. 
"Bressed be de Lord dat brought us to see dis 
first happy day of our lives/' if shipped out of the 
country by the chivalrous white man on their 



40 



PLAIN FACTS FOR EARNEST MEN. 



landing in Africa. The thought is madness. Such 
a state of things may be in accordance with strong 
delusion, judicial blindness, and hardness of heart, 
but certainly not with the doctrines of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ, the teachings of His 
most holy Word, or the merciful spirit of Chris- 
tianity ; and yet these wilful and chosen delusions 
are spreading in this country as well as in America, 
shown in the vigorous attempts now being made 
to manufacture a public opinion in honour of these 
war crusaders in America, who charge the British 
with " a decline of anti-slavery fire." It is to be 
hoped that the people of this country will not be 
blinded by the subterfuges resorted to in dwelling 
upon the black picture of the South, in order to 
heighten the virtues of the North, when, by its 
double dealing, it has excited the pity and deserves 
the execrations of mankind, or be favourably im- 
pressed with the means employed to promote the 
progress of human liberty. May it ever be the 
exalted privilege and happiness of this highly 
favoured nation to endorse a gospel of emancipation 
founded on reason and argument, and not. one of 
physical force associated with rash and bloody 
hands — the folly that seeks, through evil, good. 

Glasgow, February 1st, 1863. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
Recently Published, Second Edition, price Is. 6d. 

AMERICAN STATES AND CHURCHES, 

AND 

EE VIEWERS REVIEWED. 



u A second edition* of a volume bearing the above title has just been 
issued from the press, the contents of which will be doubtless read 
with interest by the British public, not only on account of the subject 
with which the volume avowedly deals, but because it regards the 
present American war as an illustration of Divine retribution upon 
'that kingdom for the sin of slaiaay. The author is the Rev. J. K. 
Balme (who has written several letters in the Mercury'), who went 
to America in 1852, and having acquired some property, became 
naturalized as a subject of the United States. His determined 
hostility to slavery, and the denunciations which he levelled at 
the head of all traffickers in human flesh, exposed him to the most 
violent persecution in America, and after some very narrrow 
escapes he returned to England about two years since in compar- 
ative poverty. In his native country he has endeavoured to en- 
lighten the public mind upon the subject of slavery ; but his 
treatment in certain quarters appears to have been very far from 
manly or Christian-like, and the outspoken manner in which he has 
condemned all the aiders and abettors of slavery has roused against 
him a furore of opposition, particularly in Scotland. The author 
has described slavery as he found it both in the Northern and South- 
ern States, and in the volume before us has pointed out the utter 
inconsistency of the leaders of the Northern States, both lay and 
clerical, in seeking to subject the Southern States by force of arms, 
under the pretence of emancipation, whilst they have been found 
amongst the chief sustainers of the accursed system of slavery. 
Some of the incidents are of a thrilling nature, the book is one of 
great interest." — Liverpool Mercury. 

" For his advocacy of freedom we give him all honour." — Daily 
Review, September 8, 1862. 

" The author writes well on slavery and John Brown." — United 
Presbyterian Magazine, December 1862. 

"A well furnished storehouse of facts." — Morning Advertiser. 
August 7, 1862. 

'* Mr Balme's experience enables him to teach with authority." 
— Wendell Phillips, Esq., Boston, September 22, 1862. 

' ; The book before us is a very able exposure of slavery in all its 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

forms. The book is well got up, a: 
sale." — Glasgow Examiner, Septembi 
"It illustrates wide spread en- 
American community, and exhibits ~ - , „„ „,„ „!„,; 

from the fundamental duties on wl 013 701 147 5 49 
repose." — Morning Post, August 29, 

:i This volume is amusing and instructive." — Scotsman, August 
16. 1862. 

" We shall be glad to learn that Mr Balme's book has a large 
circulation." — Morning Journal, August 25, 1862. 

"It contains much that is useful and curious, and is acceptable 
as being recorded in a permanent form." — Christian News. 

" We have already given samples of this thrilling volume, and 
cannot withhold a general and very fervent commendation of it. 
Its appearance is peculiarly seasonable, and its extensive circula- 
tion can scarcely fail to give an impulse to the reviving anti- 
slavery spirit of England. It is replete with facts, many of them 
of the highest importance, as touching individuals, churches, and 
Christian communities. It is a book which may be opened any- 
where, and read straight on, for a spirit of life pervades the whole. 
It is greatly suited to the eventful hour which is passing over us." 
—British Standard, August 29, 1862. 

" There is a sledge-hammer method of oratory with which Mr 
Balme knocks down all the idols of American enthusiasm, whicli 
renders it very easy to believe that he made himself a most un- 
pleasant neighbour among the idolators of the Union. The 
Jesuitical cunning of Everet, the Pharaoh's hard heartedness of 
Lincoln, the hypocrisy of the Beechers and Mrs Stowe, the un- 
blushing sophistry of Seward, the impious inconsistency of most 
of the negro-hating emancipationists who are still clamouring to 
reduce the South by war, are held up to universal loathing and 
contempt, with a fervour which would probably land him in Fort 
Lafayette if he were now within the reach of President Lincoln's 
police."— Saturday Review, November 8, 1862. 

" Rev. J. P. Mursell said, ' Mr Balme had long been known to 
him by, name as one of the most unflinching advocates of freedom 
in America, and had made it his object to purify the Church of 
the dreadful sin of slavery. He quite sympathized with his fer- 
vour and enthusiasm, and honoured him for it. He had not only 
advocated freedom , but suffered for it.' " Report of a Public Meeting 
at the Town Hall, Leicester, May 1861. — Leicester Mercury. 

" As to the ultra opinions of the Abolition party in the North, 
a great deal of information may be found in Mr Balme's volume, 
which exhibits the faults of North and South with praiseworthy 
impartiality." — Belfast News Letter, Feb. 18, 1863. 



London : Hamilton, Adams. & Co. 



